


Sorry Things Are So Ruff

by Nebulad



Series: Sea of Stars [26]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 04:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8189947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: The card was in English, according to his visor. He crossed Faust off the mental suspect list because while he knew very little of her culture, she often pointed out that she was French. The difference was probably a little lost on him, but English she was not, which meant that the little blue card probably wasn’t from her. There was a sad cartoon varren on the front, surrounded by rain clouds. Opening it up revealed blue bubble letters that would have spelled “sorry things are so ruff”— a human pun, almost definitely— if someone hadn’t crossed it out and in childishly careful Turian Common handwriting, replaced it with “sorry I gave you the plague”.And just like that, Faust reasserted herself on the suspect list.





	

Garrus successfully avoided the gun battery for four hours. He chatted with some of the new Cerberus Crew that seemed _surprised_ that the turian wasn’t some baby-eating bird monster— and here he thought no one was sore about First Contact but the Alliance— and hung out with Joker in the cockpit until he became “unbearable” and was kicked out. Maybe his company wasn’t so great, which was why he was avoiding the inevitability of being alone with his thoughts.

They’d just picked up Mordin and were flying away from Garrus’ greatest failure. The streets of Omega would cloud up with scum again, and there would be no Archangel. There hadn’t been one in the first place— just some pissed off rookie who thought he could make a difference somewhere, who’d thought that bureaucracy was just as bad as crime. His father failed to jail criminals, but Garrus had failed just the same to stop them.

His squad was dead and there he was, shuffling back to the gun battery on the ship of the human who’d saved his life and made him actually believe for just a _second_ that he could help people like she did. Back to his noisy, isolated console where he would stand there and beat himself up about every minute detail that he might have changed to _prevent_ all this— hindsight was a hell of a thing, and he was going to _drown_ in it.

The room was dark when he entered, and even when the lights did go up it was still a pretty dingy part of the ship. He took account for everything— he hadn’t had time earlier, in the few hours he was back on the ship before going to grab Mordin— from the console, to the new weapons bench. The UI had new buttons that he wasn’t quite sure he knew how to work, but it might keep him busy to try—

And a greeting card, standing neatly on the flat surface behind the screen.

He picked it up, frowning a little. It was a very human tradition, which he only knew because the humans in C-Sec gave him one for literally every occasion. He was never quite sure what to do with them— seemed like a waste of paper, especially for a professional courtesy that no one really asked for, but that was the sort of thing that got you sent to sensitivity training where another turian would explain to you in a dead, flat voice that if the humans thought it was important to kill their trees to make their cards then _spirits_ just let them.

This one was in English, according to his visor. He crossed Faust off the mental suspect list because while he knew very little of her culture, she often pointed out that she was French. The difference was probably a little lost on him, but English she was not, which meant that the little blue card probably wasn’t from her. There was a sad cartoon varren on the front, surrounded by rain clouds. Opening it up revealed blue bubble letters that _would_ have spelled “sorry things are so ruff”— a human pun, almost definitely— if someone hadn’t crossed it out and in childishly careful Turian Common handwriting, replaced it with “sorry I gave you the plague”.

And just like that, Faust reasserted herself on the suspect list.

The door behind him opened like magic, and Shepard herself froze at the sight of him. “Joker said I had another ten minutes,” she blurted. She was holding two plates of food, he presumed for the both of them.

“You want me to leave and come back?” he asked, casually holding up the card. She grinned nervously, shaking her head and shuffling into the room properly. While she busied herself with setting up their food— she had a table and all, even though it was pretty much just several empty crates shoved together— Garrus once again reviewed the card. “You didn’t give me the plague,” he argued.

“I kind of did.” She didn’t even look up.

“I told you I would stay with you.” He moved to help but she shooed him away— her face was red which he had to remind himself was not alarming. Definitely not alarming. Human blood was red and it rushed to her face same as everyone else and it was _not_ a reason to jump.

“As your Commander, I could have totally sent you back to the ship where you would _not_ have gotten the plague. Instead, I brought you along because the concept of mortality means nothing to me until someone besides myself is on the brink of death,” she said, folding her arms over her chest like she was cold.

“Shepard,” he scolded, shuffling her over to the boxes she had set up as chairs. “First of all, I wasn’t on the brink of death; I had a cough that didn’t do anything but make it harder to aim.” She sat down and he took the box nearest her— the whole setup was comically too small for both of them. “Secondly, it’s cured now. It’s so cured that Mordin told me unless I wanted a new disease I had to leave his office.” That was another thing he’d tried to waste time on. Mordin Solus, as it turned out, wouldn’t be having any of that.

She grabbed a sandwich that Garrus _really_ hoped was the right one because frankly complaining to him about his near-death was _rich_ coming from Commander Eats-Whatever-She-Finds-Whether-Or-Not-She-Can-Digest-It, or Faust “Less Talking More Shooting” Shepard. He took the other one— leap of faith— and turned out they either got very lucky, or she’d actually kept track of which plate was which. “I just… I was scared,” she admitted.

“Of the plague?” It was kind of frightening, but he figured it’d be less so for someone who knew they weren’t going to catch it. The other squadmate had been Miranda, so really he was the only one going in on a prayer.

“ _No._ Look like five hours earlier I wasn’t even sure if you were going to _live._ You can’t almost die on your best friend and then just expect me to let you wander back to the ship like it’s nothing. I was afraid that if you went off on your own then something would… happen.” He couldn’t tell if she sounded defensive or just embarrassed, but either way it was kind of touching that she was still so worried about him.

He leaned forward once she put down her food, taking both her hands in his. They were soft (comparatively, anyway) and he wasn’t going to think about it. “Faust, I know you were dead for two years and all but I think it’s about time we reintroduced you to the concept of irony. For example: it’s _ironic_ that the human who died on her best friend and stayed dead for _two years_ is complaining to him about being _almost_ dead for five hours.”

She snorted and it made him grin back at her which _killed_ the whole deadpan thing he was going for but felt good anyway. “I’m trying to open up to you emotionally, Vakarian,” she scolded, looking a little wibbly like humans did when they were sad. She was also smiling, though, so he… just gave up trying to figure out how she was feeling.

“No, I heard that part. Scared of me dying and so took me into the plague slums rather than letting me walk ten feet to the port,” he teased.

“When you say it like _that_ it just sounds dumb.”

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing blog is here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com) and yes I did think the pun was funny and yes I did google "funny sympathy cards" and yes it was fucked up because there's no such thing as a funny sympathy card. In other news I'm watching Inuyasha for the first time in my 21 years of life and it sure is something all right.


End file.
